True Crime

“Nate, you bum,” a familiar tenor voice said. “You’re supposed to be working!”

I touched a napkin to my mouth and smiled up at my friend Barney Ross, who was wearing a tux he looked uncomfortable in and had a good-looking redheaded girl on his arm, which made a more comfortable fit.

“I am working,” I said softly. “Why don’t you and your lovely friend fill these two empty chairs before you blow my cover?”

Barney’s bulldog-cute face made an embarrassed smirk and the puppy-dog brown eyes rolled, and he pulled a chair out for his lady and sat down between us and shrugged and said, “So tonight I’m a shlemiel. I’ll pick up the check.”

“Thanks, but no thanks. I got a client who’ll pick it up.”

His grin turned lopsided. “Gee, that’s white of you, Nate. I think I’ll have lobster.”

“I’m not that white, chum. I don’t pick up checks for rich guys, even when I’m getting expenses.”

The redhead smiled at hearing Barney called “rich,” but it embarrassed him.

“Rich, smich,” he said. “A few years, I’ll be out of work and borrowing from you.”

“Keep playing the ponies and you may be right.”

Barney’s only vice was gambling; that, and being a soft touch for his old West Side pals. We’d grown up together on Maxwell Street, when I’d been his family’s Shabbes goy (my father was a Jew, but nonpracticing; my late mother’s Catholicism never caught on with me, either). By the time I was a teenager, I was living in Douglas Park, but I’d come back Sundays to Maxwell Street where Barney and I worked together—Barney as a “puller,” a barker in front of the store who often physically yanked prospective buyers off the street and inside; and me taking over from there, with the sales pitch. A couple of roughnecks, but Barney was rougher, a scrappy little street fighter who’d had to fend for himself and his family since he was a kid of thirteen. That was when thieves shot Barney’s father in the Rasofsky’s hole-in-the-wall dairy, and killed him.

By the way, in case you didn’t recognize the name, Barney Ross grew up to be another kind of fighter, namely the lightweight champion of the world. And just this past May he’d taken the legendary Jimmy McLarnin in NYC for the welterweight crown, as well.

“This is Pearl,” he said, gesturing to the attractive redhead. “The gal I been telling you about.”

I reached a hand across the table and took hers, shook it; her hand was smooth and warm and she had a nice smile. Her eyes were big and blue, and her nose was a little big. It looked good on her, though. She had a low-cut blue velvet formal on; her bosom was milky white and there was plenty of it.

“So you’re Barney’s private detective friend,” she said.

I put a finger to my lips in a shush gesture. “Let’s make that our little secret, for the time being.”

Barney put an arm around her shoulder and said, sotto voce, “Like he said before, he’s working. He’s tailing somebody or something. Mum’s the word.”

She crinkled her chin in an embarrassed, attractively earthy little smile. “Sorry.”

“S’okay,” I said, smiling back. “Let me get you something from the bar…” I started to wave for a waiter.

“Thanks, Nate, but no,” Barney said. “I’m in training, remember?”

“But Pearl’s not. Are you, Pearl? And have you eaten yet?”

They admitted they hadn’t, and I insisted they join me.

“A man alone at a place like this sticks out like a sore thumb,” I explained. “Stick around and make me look legit.”

They ordered—Pearl asked for a Pink Lady, and both of them had the baked finnan haddie a la Moir—and Barney said, “Pearl’s in from New York through the weekend, Nate.”

“That’s terrific.”

“I, uh…wanted her to meet Ma, and my brothers and my sis.”

“This sounds serious.”

Barney almost blushed; Pearl just smiled.

“Be true to this guy, Pearl,” I said, “or someday you might have somebody like me following you around.”

Barney leaned forward conspiratorially. “Is that what this is about?”

I nodded. “That pretty apple-cheeked lass and the mustached gent across the way are, well, naughty. Or so it would seem.”

“His wife your client?” Barney asked.

“Her husband,” I said.

He shook his head. “Dirty business you’re in.”

“Beats having some guy bash your head in.”

He smiled a little, cocked his head. “If you’re trying to describe the way I make my living, let me remind you a couple things. First, I make my living by having some guy try to bash my head in—nobody’s quite got the job done yet. And second, my work pays better than yours.”

I took a last bite of brisket. “Yeah, but you can’t eat on the job.”

Pearl was watching us closely, and seemed to have figured out that Barney and me needling each other was just a sign of how deep our friendship ran.

“Incident’ly,” he said, “Pearl’s got her own room, here. Just wanted you to know, before you got any